Wet plate / artificial lighting

[eddie]

but also because the collodion starts to dry after 1 min exposure,

that is not true.

rob kendrick has done a few shots that took over 30 min from flowing the plates to developing them.

i have also shot over 1 min on many occassions and have not had the collodion dry out on me.

just for the record....collodion starts to dry as soon as you pour it on the plate...starting to dry is not an issue. drying out is the issue.

eddie

ps, buy faster lenses already.....you will probably end up with the same money spent after you buy all them lights......

[Fourtoes]

For what its worth my last exposure for wet plate was 12 minutes.......

[cyrus]

that is not true.
ps, buy faster lenses already.....you will probably end up with the same money spent after you buy all them lights......

Faster lens for a 20x24 camera, open to suggestions.
(I am actually experimenting with Wet plate ULF as a stepping-stone to dryplate and hoping that dry plate will prove to need less fancy lighting)

[cyrus]

Cyrus,

I've noticed a few posts where you mention dry plate as an alternative...

I have no experience with wet plate, but with dry plate here's my experience...

I had a small studio (15x25 +-) and thought I'd add dry plate portraits (liquid emulsion tintypes) - it had no outside light sources - dark - spent some time experimenting with lighting - trying to find something fast enough for a simple seated child portrait.

My studio strobes, which weren't much, but plenty for the studio size for film - all mono's - 2 320w/s - 2 160w/s - 2 100w/s...wouldn't touch dry plates...I tried a half dozen quartz...hot, still slow...Tried half dozen hot lights with daylight 500watt bulbs...still hot, still slow...tried 4 - 4 light 4' daylight flourescent banks with an 8 light 4' flourescent ring...got down to 3-6 seconds w/ f4 lenses...but still slow and they had to be very close, too close for normal crops...

I never tried HID lamps, and finally dropped the idea - figured the best route would be actual daylight...

I wish you luck...and would like to know if you find something that actually works...

Cheers,
Dan

Ach! Thank you but this is not good news!!! What formula did you use to make your emulsion? or did you purchase Liquid Emulsion?

Silver is silver, whether in collodion or gelatin, and needs close to UV exposure but I am hoping that the "ripening" of a homemade gelatin emulsion would provide more sensitivity than wet plate. (In fact I am depending on this! when film is no longer made.)

I would want to test with continuous ligthing of course but if I can't do dry plate with less exposure than required for wet plate, I'm not going to go ULF at all and will spend the $ on an nice etching press for photogravure instead. (I'll probably just keep my 11x14 camera for the occasional use outdoors but mainly as a dry plate camera since doing LF wet plate outdoors is just too incovenient for me)

[johnielvis]

HEY===there's some dude on collodion that can FREEZE motion on wetplate with TWO 1600 ws strobes at 5'

now...all my monolites are 750's...3 of them...3 more and I'll be in bidness....

this is what I calculated from my experiments using paper in the camera with strobe

must be at least double what I got....even then...wide open, you know?

[Sevo]

Getting hold of flash tubes without UV blocking "gold" coating is probably half the way to success...

[johnielvis]

ahhhhh....yeah....I noticed that last time I was looking at strobes...I got some that are like 13 years old and at that time they didn't mention anything about uv coating---NOW i I want a replacement tube, it will likely have to be the upgraded type

so is that how you tell? a gold coating? mine are clear and I can't remember any sort of gold tone last time I saw new strobes....not that I was really looking, but nothing on the tubes seemed to look overly ANY color other than like BLUE...

yeah--that's tough--how to determine the uv output BEFORE you buy replacement tubes or new strobes--it's not like there's uv flash meters available...

[cyrus]

Getting hold of flash tubes without UV blocking "gold" coating is probably half the way to success...

Ah, yes. That's a good point.

[cyrus]

I forgot to add that I've discovered there are such things as 250 watt 6500K flo grow lights made by a company called Feliz. These are sort of expensive at $70-$100/bulb but should provide quite a punch! I had been a bit reluctant to bother with CFLs until I noticed these.

[Scott Davis]

Salted collodion is sensitive over a range from blue through near UV wavelengths. Glass still transmits a good proportion of UV--especially in the range of collodion's sensitivity. I'd love to test a Kalosat lens with quartz elements to see the difference in exposure--but they're sort of...scarce. I still have to take Scott up on his offer to test out his non-uv coated flashtubes. There's theory--and then there's practice. Can you find some studio space with large windows--a loft? Nothing beats the sun for collodion and you don't need quartz windows.

Barry- I also saw in your earlier post you have Hensel strobes. Not sure which model you have, but IIRC, there are uncoated flash tubes available for Hensels as well. Probably not worth the ~$300 per tube as an experiment, but we should try it out with mine (Calumet/Bowens) and see if it works. If it does, you're 3/4 of the way there, and just need the spare flash tubes. Oh, and I now have TWO 2400 w/s packs, so they could be daisy-chained together if one pack alone is insufficient. I don't know if I'd try it at my current studio though - the wiring is definitely sub-optimal.

Another thought, to the general audience- some strobe manufacturers deal with the uv-blocking by coating the glass protective domes and leave the tubes alone. If you have a glass protective dome on your strobe, you could always try and take it off.